receptors

> Ulrich,
> "They" referred to luteoviruses, but your point is taken. On the other hand,
> one could argue that replicative viruses are insect viruses that can also
> replicate in plants, rather than plant viruses that have hijacked an insect
> for transport.....
Again, it is instructive to see just which viruses multiply in insects and
in plants: reoviruses, rhabdoviruses, bunyaviruses....all very "animal"
viruses, which can be argued have evolved to use plants as alternative
hosts (=vectors). Other more distant support for such a
hypothesis comes from tenuiviruses, which apparently resemble nothing more
than an "escaped" helical nucleocapsid from a kosher enveloped negative-
sense ssRNA animal virus - and which are insect-transmitted - and the plant
picorna-like viruses (eg parsnip yellow fleck), which, although they
apparently do not (any more?) replicate in their aphid vectors, are
definitely vectored. And look a whole lot like a myriad other picorna-
like viruses of insects....and picornaviruses of animals...... Makes tyou
think, doesn't it?
____________________________________________________________________
| Ed Rybicki, PhD | "Lord, won't you buy me |
| (ed at micro.uct.ac.za) | |
| Dept Microbiology | A Mer-ce-des Benz..." |
| University of Cape Town | |
| Private Bag, Rondebosch | |
| 7700, South Africa | - Janis Joplin |
| fax: 27-21-650 4023 | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------